Abstract
Perhaps the best way to begin an inquiry into the relation between morality and politics is to start with an exploration of the nature of morality. This, in any event, is what I plan to do here, and when we turn to this issue, two seemingly contradictory aspects of morality quickly stand out. On the one hand, the notion of morality often seems to carry with it a sense of certainty, universality, and objectivity. To say, for example, that prima facie promises ought to be kept is to articulate a moral rule that is ordinarily supposed to be binding upon the will and in this sense true. The rule concedes that there may be some occasions when one ought not keep promises, but this is because there may be occasions when the rule is overridden by more urgent or pressing moral rules or principles. The rule does not assert, on the other hand, that it is simply true for some particular person at some distinctive point in time that promises ought to be kept. To say that a moral rule is objective is not to say that it is only true for some people at some point in time, though from a sociological point of view this is surely the case if the people in question believe the rule to be true. Instead, thinking some rule is objective implies that it is true tout court; the truth of the rule is not conditional upon the beliefs of those people who happen to ascribe to it. The idea of relativism, which may make some sense sociologically, seems inconsistent with our notion of morality.
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Notes
Cf. Richard Brandt, Hopi Ethics: A Theoretical Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954);
John Ladd, The Structure of a Moral Code: A Philosophical Analysis of Ethical Discourse Applied to the Ethics of the Navaho Indians (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957).
Kurt Baier, The Moral Point of View (New York: Random House, 1958), 126.
Ibid., 107. Baier’s moral point of view no doubt owes much to preceding ideal observer theories of morality, which, in turn, call to mind Adam Smith’s impartial spectator. Cf., Roderick Firth, “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 12 (1952): 317–45.
For related arguments, see R.M. Hare, Reason and Freedom (London: Oxford University Press, 1963);
Alan Gewirth, Reason and Morality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978).
See also J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), Ch. 4.
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. J.P. Mayer, trans. George Lawrence (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Co., 1969), 526. Tocqueville actually uses the phrase “enlightened self-love” to describe what he calls self-interest “properly understood.”
See also David Gauthier, Morals by Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
Stuart Hampshire, Morality and Conflict (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 105.
Hampshire would seem to be in agreement with Baier on this point. He appeals to a process of reasoning, a process that involves hearing from and listening to others, in his thoughts on how to best address the problems created by normative conflict. Cf. Stuart Hampshire, Justice is Conflict (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 79–98.
Following this strategy, Kant regarded political philosophy as simply a special branch of moral philosophy. Cf., I. Kant, The Metaphysical of Morals, trans. by Mary Gregor (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 35–55.
Historically, this view of the relation of politics to morality, and of the social aspect of the moral law more generally, may be seen to emerge in the works of Pufendorf and Cumberland, both of whom took exception to the political realism of Hobbes and sought to strengthen the case for civil association by transforming this political realism into a form of moral necessity. On Pufendorf, see Craig L. Carr ed., The Political Writings of Samuel Pufendorf, trans. Michael J. Seidler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 136–57. For Cumberland, see Richard Cumberland, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Laws of Nature (London, 1727).
See also Craig L. Carr and Michael J. Seidler, “Pufendorf, Sociality, and the Modern State,” History of Political Thought XVII, 3 (1996): 354–78.
Stuart Hampshire, Innocence and Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 177.
Machiavelli, The Prince, trans. Daniel Donno (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1981), 28–42.
Cf. Stuart Hampshire, Two Theories of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 44.
Cf. Isaiah Berlin, “To Concepts of Liberty,” in Berlin ed., Four Essays on Liberty (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), 118–72.
Ibid., 186. Hampshire’s views in this regard are reminiscent of Rawls’s recourse to a shared public morality that underlies his attempt to configure his theory of justice in order to diffuse moral and normative conflict. This, in effect, is the spirit behind Rawls’s political liberalism; yet Rawls’s focus upon political stability pushed him in the direction of a pursuit of reasonableness that actually exacerbates the problem he hoped to address. Cf. John Rawls, Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 58–66.
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© 2010 Craig L. Carr
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Carr, C.L. (2010). The Politics of Morality. In: Liberalism and Pluralism. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230106055_3
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